


Redirection

by gogollescent



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Facets", Dax picks up the pieces, and learns why changelings don't drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redirection

The strange thing is, she can remember how she looked at him. Jadzia Dax—in those days, just Jadzia, a young woman as recessed as she was lovely, but not afraid, at times, to stare. Curzon liked that about her; liked the sudden weight of her glance, blue as ash, how it coated you with prickling regard. Curzon believed that she could see things other people couldn’t, and would therefore be able to sense his love: a worm lurking beneath the skin like a more dastardly symbiant—as persistent, though dumb, wordless and without access to any other life. He sent her away and felt her eyes on his back when he turned from her. But she never suspected; even after taking him into herself, didn’t guess. She sometimes wonders how she could possibly have missed it, having his life at her leisure to pore over, but the truth is it’s discomfiting to pull of recollection featuring your own free body, before it and the recollector were joined. Why was she watching him, as an initiate? For his reaction, of course—marking her progress—but more than that she was hungry for evidence of perfection. Harsh old Curzon, arbiter of her fate, host to a legend in the accumulation: she would have cannibalized him with all her senses, given half a chance.

She finds Odo wringing wine out of his hands the morning after the ritual. He’s doing it in Quark’s, of all places—maybe planning to return the wine to its purveyor after. Odo can be very thoughtful. Besides, it’s empty at this time of day, people preferring to mosey along on the Promenade.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hello, Commander,” says Odo, raising his gaze. He’s looking more than usually blurry. She supposes molecular confusion might be as painful, in its way, as a hangover.

“I wondered if you might suffer side effects from all the—ingestion,” she says apologetically, nodding to the bowl. “Is it very bad?”

His brow furrows: not the normal perfect, Zen-garden tracks, but a deep organic crease, like folding a bag of clay. “It’s strange,” he says. “As though I have another presence inside me. Curzon was more talkative, of course.”

It takes her a moment to work this out, and her expression when she does must be golden; Odo actually barks a laugh. “If I were in any discomfort, I would see Dr. Bashir,” he tells her, which is probably a lie but not a vast one. “No, this is just a question of… extracting it.” He squeezes his hand like a man squeezing a stone: sure enough, a pure stream of liquid jets out from between his curled fingers, deep precious red and faceted as it falls.

“How are you doing it?” says Dax, mesmerized. “I mean, if the foreign material’s been—absorbed—”

“It’s all in the redirection,” says Odo. “I form channels, if you will, in my internal structure, and then funnel out what I wish to extrude.” He gestures; droplets get everywhere. There are little welling holes in his palm, like the breathing tunnels of those Earth crabs that bury themselves in the beach. It’s disturbing, but in a way it reminds her of her own markings: the scattered porous quality, darkness beneath the skin.

“It’s remarkable,” she says, leaning closer. He turns his hand flat down, holding it level above the bowl, and she smiles to see the dripping excess, blood or jewels in the gloom of the bar. “Remarkable,” she says again, and he smiles back, secretive and a little smug; his palm smooths, and she remembers—the moment of transformation, just beginning. How it had felt to change. 


End file.
